washingtonpost.com: Policy Met Politics in Cuba Rules Page 1 of 5 washingtonpost.com Policy Met Politics in Cuba Rules Fla. Anti-Castro Forces Helped Shape Laws By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01 Released AUGUST 18, 2004 Early last year, Otto Reich shopped a new project to his boss, national security Delta Air Lines $98 & up Labor Day Weekend Fare Sale, adviser Condoleezza Rice. A Havana-born hard-liner with a habit of picking verbal Nationwide fights with Cuban President Fidel Castro, Reich believed the United States was Fare Deals $399 unprepared for Castro's fall and needed a transition strategy. Costa Rica: 7-Night Vacation from 5 Cities Rice liked the idea. The White House was overwhelmed with preparations for LastMinuteTravel.com $29 Las Vegas Hotel, Weekends invading Iraq, so she told her new special envoy for Latin America to proceed and only $10 More promised to pay closer attention after the war. Reich and a close-knit team of State CruisesOnly $199 Department political appointees felt they had, at last, an insider's chance to undo 3-Night "Sampler Cruise" on Castro. Holland America Independence Air $29-$84 Fall Sale to 37 Destinations on As Reich's initiative gathered steam, word kept reaching the White House that Cuban New Airline Americans in Miami felt that President Bush had broken his promises to challenge Expedia.com $380 Castro more sharply. Worse, Republican political figures warned that Cuban Hawaii 4-Night Air/Hotel Americans crucial to Bush's 537-vote margin in Florida in 2000 might stay home in Package Crowne Plaza Resort $69 2004. Bahamas Bahamas Crowne Plaza Resort It was a matter, state Rep. David Rivera said, of "telling the White House we need at 50% OFF *Fares listed may not include all some help down here. We need something to motivate people." taxes, charges and government fees. More Information. © 2004 Travelzoo Inc. This confluence of policymaking and politics led to the tightest restrictions on Cuban Americans' interactions with the island in decades: a limit of one visit every three years, a sharp reduction in how much they can spend there and new curbs on the goods they can send. Cuba policy has historically been driven by domestic politics, but this episode -- in accounts given by participants and close observers in Miami and Washington -- offers an exceptional glimpse into how the two interact. The policy, imposed this summer, prompted a revolt in Congress and angered some of the Cuban Americans it was intended to please; it also produced enough animosity, Democrats hope, to help throw Florida to Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). Officials said critical political input came from the president's brother Jeb Bush, who is Florida's governor and an avid cultivator of the state's Cuban American population. State Department officials confirmed that, in a Congress severely divided on how to produce democracy in Cuba, they reached out only to the three Cuban American Republican representatives from South Florida -- all strong proponents of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. Assistant Secretary of State Roger F. Noriega, who managed the policy review, said he and his aides had numerous conversations with members of the White House political staff under Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser and a fierce supporter of travel limits. Politics played a "natural" role in shaping the strategy, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26928-2004Aug23?language=printer 8/24/2004 washingtonpost.com: Policy Met Politics in Cuba Rules Page 2 of 5 Noriega said. "Politics intersect with the policy. In a democracy, it always should," he said. The role of foreign policy experts at the National Security Council, said one participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was "as great as, or greater than, the politics shop." In fact, the opinions of the most hard-line administration figures and some members of the White House political staff dovetailed significantly, even if their ambitions for the policy were different: One was focused on Bush's reelection, the other on Castro's demise. Defenders of the policy said discussions inside the administration were intense and final decisions were made by Bush. They describe him as convinced that the strategy would wound Castro and energize more voters than it alienated. Former diplomat Wayne Smith, an opponent of sanctions, said: "I've been involved in U.S.-Cuba policy since 1958. This is the stupidest policy I've ever seen, bar none." The Plan The story begins with Reich, a former lobbyist and diplomat. Bush named him assistant secretary of state for Latin America in 2001 after Jeb Bush recommended him and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) -- a Cuban American hard-liner whose aunt was married to Castro -- appealed to Rove. The Senate never confirmed him. Democrats blasted Reich as a divisive, one-issue figure, and the White House found no enthusiasm among moderate Republicans for a fight. When Reich's recess appointment expired, he moved to the NSC under Rice. With him, he carried his idea for developing a transition plan for Cuba. By October 2003, Reich's proposal had taken shape as the President's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Cuban-born Housing Secretary Mel R. Martinez as co- chairmen. The commission would "plan for Cuba's transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society, to identify ways to hasten the arrival of that day," Bush said in the Rose Garden. The administration was not in good favor at the time with an important segment of the Cuban American community, according to political figures and analysts interviewed in Miami and Washington. Strongly anti- Castro activists believed that Bush had not delivered on promises to revise Clinton administration policy and crack down on Castro. "There were tremendous expectations that something would happen in Cuba. Here was someone who was rough and tough," said Dennis K. Hays, former head of the State Department's Cuba desk. Yet nearly three years into Bush's term, Hays said, the disillusionment was powerful. The last straw for some Bush supporters was the July 2003 decision to repatriate a dozen Cubans intercepted after hijacking a Cuban government boat. The State Department negotiated a promise from Cuba to impose 10- year prison terms instead of executing them. Calling the negotiations "offensive and misguided," 13 Republican Florida legislators sent a letter to Bush -- with copies to Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie -- describing "great disappointment and outrage" over the lack of a comprehensive Cuba policy. "We fear," they wrote, "the historic and intense support from Cuban American voters for Republican federal http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26928-2004Aug23?language=printer 8/24/2004 washingtonpost.com: Policy Met Politics in Cuba Rules Page 3 of 5 candidates, including yourself, will be jeopardized." Bush's commission, composed solely of government officials, first met in December. Martinez soon resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in Florida, leaving Powell in charge. Given a deadline to file a report in six months -- and barely six months before the November elections -- the authors worked fast. Powell assigned Noriega to coordinate the effort. To run the crucial working group that would design plans to destabilize Castro, Noriega drafted his deputy, Daniel Fisk. Fisk was a fellow staff member to former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), an ardent Castro opponent. The report's editor was Jose Cardenas, who worked for the Cuban American National Foundation when it dominated U.S. policy. The staff consulted principally with individuals and groups whose hard-line opinions were well advertised. When others later objected, one U.S. official argued that "trying to wade through all the different people who had an interest in Cuba was going to be very complicated and was not necessarily going to make the report any better." No issues were more sharply argued than the rules for remittances and travel to the island. The theory behind 40 years of U.S. sanctions is that economic hardship will squeeze Castro from power, or at least force change. But Reich, Noriega, Helms and others have long argued that prevailing restrictions were not strong enough to punish a government that profits enormously from travel dollars and money shipped to Cubans by relatives and friends abroad. The Rules As the president's commission did its work, some of Bush's most vocal supporters in Miami called for a nonnegotiable end to trips to Cuba. Others said exiles should not be permitted to return to the island until they had received U.S. citizenship. At the time, Cuban Americans were officially restricted to one trip per year, but exceptions were routine. Within the commission, one group argued that remittances -- then limited to $100 a month -- should be eliminated. Someone else proposed a 90-day moratorium. Among those seeking a firm line were Noriega and Diaz-Balart, who noted in an interview, "I've been on the record for cutting as much of the flow of currency to the regime as possible." Sources said members of the White House political staff pressed the mid-level State Department officials to push ever harder on Castro -- harder than even the veteran anti-Castro players had intended. They found themselves pushing back as they drafted their final recommendations. For a final review by Powell, Rice and other Cabinet-level appointees on the presidential commission, Noriega's team produced a strongly worded document. It called for a 50 percent reduction in remittances and a cut in travel by Cuban Americans to once every three years, with no exceptions for illness or death in the family.